GMO Crops & Feeding the World

According to the World Health Organization, there is more than enough food to feed the global population. Hunger is the result of distribution and infrastructure problems, and it won’t be eliminated by growing genetically engineered crops (commonly called GMOs).

The companies that develop and market GMOs may promise that they will produce greater yields and solve the world’s food shortages, but recent studies show that GMO yields are hardly keeping pace with non-GMO crops. Farmers growing GMO crops have had to rely on ramping up their use of toxic weed killers and struggle with the evolution of herbicide-resistant “superweeds.”

Furthermore, it’s a myth that U.S. farms “feed the world.” American producers only grow 4 percent of the world’s fruit, vegetables, wheat and rice (see graphic below) – and less than 8 percent of overall global food calories.

Moreover, for U.S. food manufacturers that do export GMO food to any of the 64 countries around the world that require labeling, disclosing the presence of genetically engineered ingredients in their products is just another part of doing business.

This report, one of the first independent studies to measure the impact of GMO crops, concluded that they have not raised the intrinsic or potential yield of any crop. To the contrary, it found that traditional seed breeding has been the root cause of successful efforts to boost yields.

Some GMO crops actually generate lower yields that non-GMO varieties. This paper described a field trial of soybeans that resulted in a 50 percent drop in the yield of GMO varieties because of gene disruption.

“GE crops available for commercial use do not increase the yield potential of a variety. In fact, yield may even decrease… Perhaps the biggest issue raised by these results is how to explain the rapid adoption of GE crops when farm financial impacts appear to be mixed or even negative.”